Former Florida GOP senator George LeMieux announced today that he will run for the Senate in 2012.

LeMieux, who served as Gov. Charlie Crist’s chief-of-staff and was appointed to the Senate to finish Sen. Mel Martinez’s term by Crist, is already distancing himself from his former boss, who left the Republican party when it became clear that Marco Rubio would win the primary. There is no mention of Crist in LeMieux’s official biography until the penultimate paragraph when it discusses how LeMieux ultimately endorsed Rubio last year.

“When he [Crist] left the Republican party, I endorsed Marco Rubio the next day,” LeMieux tells NRO.

He also said he intends to focus on his conservative record while campaigning. “I’m going to talk about my record in the Senate, and the conservative things that I fought for. I think my record was well-regarded, and you’ll see on the website, that there’s a lot of third-party conservative folks who have said good things about the time that I served in Washington.”